Graduated from Ohio Wesleyan and Emory & Henry College, Virginia (1869). In 1870, he became an ordained minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He pastored in Knoxville, Tennessee (1870-72); San Francisco, California (1872-74); and Asheville, North Carolina. From 1875-1879, he taught at Martha Washington College, Abingdon, Virginia, then became president of M.W. College (1880-1884). He later became president pro-tem of his alma mater, Emory & Henry College. He was also a professor of Church History at Vanderbilt University (1886-90), and edited the Christian Advocate in Nashville, Tenneesee (1890-92). In 1902, he became the Methodist bishop of Dallas, Texas.

Married 19 Nov 1872 in Knox Co., TN to Abigail Bell "Abbie" Clarke, d/o Edwin Reuben and Mary Ann (Sessler) Clarke. Henry was s/o Henry A. and Anna Maria (Sevier) Hoss. Anna Maria Sevier was d/o Maj. John Jr. and Sophia (Garoutte/Garrette) Sevier and granddaughter of John Sevier, governor of the "lost" state of Franklin and first governor of Tennessee.

Father of Mary Sevier "Minnie" (Hoss) Headman, Elijah Embree Hoss Jr. and Dr. Henry Sessler Hoss Sr., M.D.

BURIAL: Embree and Abbie were originally buried in Greenhill Cemetery in Muskogee County, Oklahoma and then were transferred and reinterred in Maple Lawn Cemetery on Jackson Boulevard in Jonesborough, TN on 12 Apr 1924.

" I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; Yea, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them." —Rev. xiv., 13.
Elijah Embree Hoss was born April 14th, 1849, in a country home four miles south of Jonesboro. Tenn., and passed to his reward at the home of his son, Dr. H. S. Hoss, in Muskogee, Okla., on April 23rd, 1919. where the body was given its resting place beside that of his beloved wife who preceded him less than one year. He was well born. His father, Henry Hoss, had in his veins the blood of Michael Boone, an ancestor of Daniel Boone, the famous Indian fighter. His mother was Anna Maria (Sevier) Hoss, a granddaughter of General John Sevier, a pioneer of the "Watauga Settlement," the most successful Indian fighter of his day, the only Governor of the State of Frankland; the first, and several times, Governor of Tennessee, and a Representative of his State in Congress; a hero, and probably the hero, as claimed by his descendants, of the Battle of King's Mountain, which turned the tide of the Revolution. Thus, it appears, the Bishop came not only from valorous, but of very distinguished stock; and all who knew him will testify that he kept up the traditions of his forbears.
His father removed to Jonesboro while Embree was yet a lad. Henry Hoss was a man of sterling qualities, and was a most useful and highly respected citizen. The mother was finely endowed and splendidly cultured, and was a deeply pious woman. Embree was the second child of eight. He was a precocious youth, and, withal, was a good boy who followed closely the Godly precepts of his mother, whom he almost adored through all his life. His reverence for his parents was profound; and it is not believed he ever caused a shadow to rest upon the brow of either parent. He was reared in the rather aristocratic town, at that time, of Jonesboro, and had the advantages of good society and excellent schools. He professed religion and joined the Church in 1859, under the pastorate of the late Grinsfield Taylor. He was licensed a Methodist preacher in 1866. In 1869 he joined the Holston Conference of the M. E. Church, South, was ordained a Deacon in 1870. by Bishop Kavanaugh, and an Elder by Bishop McTyeire, in 1871. In 1866 his father sent him to the Ohio Wesleyan University, but during the second year at that institution, some Negro students having been admitted, the father, though an intense Unionist during the war between the states, promptly recalled his son, and placed him in Emory and Henry College, Virginia, where he graduated in 1869.
E. E. Hoss was married to Miss Abbie Belle Clark November 19, 1872, by Rev. Geo. D. French, later his brother-in-law. Of this union three children were born: E. E. Hoss, Jr., of Birmingham, Ala.; Mrs. Mary Headman, of Collinwood, N. J., and Dr. H. S. Hoss, of Muskogee, Okla.
The first pastorate to which the young preacher was assigned was to the Jonesboro and Greeneville Station, in 1869. Among the first members received by him into the church, if, indeed, not the very first, were his father and his brother-in-law, the late Judge S. J. Kirkpatrick, of Jonesboro, Tenn. In 1870 he was assigned to the Knoxville Station, and in 1871 to Church Street, Knoxville, and during that Conference year, was transferred to the Pacific Conference, and stationed in San Francisco. In 1874 he was elected President of the Pacific Methodist College. In 1875 he was transferred back to the Holston Annual Conference and stationed at Asheville, N. C. In 1876 he was made a professor in Martha Washington College, Abingdon, Va.; in 1878 he was elected its president, and served until made professor in, and vice-president of, Emory and Henr- College, Virginia, in 1881. and served to the close of the scholastic year in June, 1885, when he was elected president of that institution. Before entering upon the duties of president, he resigned to accept the professorship of Church History in Vanderbilt University; he remained in that capacity until elected, by the General Conference at St. Louis, in 1890, editor of the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, the general organ of the Church; for twelve years he was its peerless editor, until, in 1902, at Dallas, Texas, he was elected a Bishop on the first ballot by an unusually large majority. He was retired to the superannuate list in Atlanta, in 1918, on account of feebleness and failing health. The honorary degrees of Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Laws were conferred upon him by his alma mater, who was proud of her distinguished son.
So runs the early working life of E. E. Hoss down to his election as a bishop, or general superintendent in his Church, though all of his activities in church work, both before and after his election to the episcopacy, cannot be here enumerated, for his life covered a field of remarkable scope, and of various and varied transactions.
Dr. Hoss was a reserve delegate to the General Conference of 1882, and a delegate to the five succeeding General Conferences, and led the ministerial delegations to the last three General Conferences, and to the one, inclusive, that elected him a bishop; the last time he was elected a member of the General Conference, he lacked only six votes beside his own of being unanimously elected.
He represented our Church in the Ecumenical Conference in Washington City in 1891; and in London In 1901, and in Toronto in 1911. In 1910 he represented our Church at the British and Irish Wesleyan Conference, and on the same trip served the missions in China, Japan and Korea; he served those missions again in 1915. He traveled extensively throughout England and Ireland making speeches and preaching, at the request of the Methodists there. He was a fraternal delegate to the Canada Methodists; and fraternal messenger, in 1890, to the General Conference of the M. E. Church, He represented his own Church, and also the M. E. Church, at the request of her bishops, in 1916, in Australia, and traveled 4,000 miles over that island, preaching, it being the centennial of Methodism there; his labors there are said to have been very effective. Bishop Jno. W. Hamilton, of the M. E. Church, at Traverse City, Mich., in 1917, speaking before the Committee on Unification, in regard to a message to be wired Bishop Hoss regretting his absence from the committee on account of personal and family afflictions, after tenderly referring to him as a "great man," said: "Bishop Hoss is an honorable man. He represented the M. E. Church in the Orient as faithfully as he did his own. He knows more Methodists than does any other man. He is known by more Methodists than is any other living man. He is, in fact, the leader of world-wide Methodism today."
In 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1908 he presided over the Brazil Methodist Conferences. He crossed the seas eight times in the service of his Church. Bishop Hoss was a member of the joint committee that formulated the Methodist Hymnal used by the two leading Methodist Churches. He was a member of the Joint Commission for the Unification of American Methodism, and was easily as great as the greatest of the distinguished members of that body, and the most beloved of them all. He wrote a life of Bishop Mckendree and of Dr. Morton. He wrote a book on "Methodist Fraternity and Federation," which issued from our Publishing House. His fraternal addresses were published in book form. He read widely the works of great authors, and current literature; wrote extensively for secular and religious papers and for first-class magazines and reviews. He wrote the comments on the Sunday School lessons appearing in our Quarterlies while Dr. Cunnyngham was Sunday School editor; and later Hoss' Notes on the Sunday School lessons published in book form. He was appointed by the College of Bishops to write a history of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, commenced to do so, but the life-current was cut before he had made much progress in that important undertaking.
He was an enthusiastic leader in the long and strenuous fight which resulted in state-wide prohibition in Tennessee. He led the van in the memorable judicial contest, wherein the Church sought to wrench her great university from the clutch of Caesar, secured a victory in the Chancery Court but failed in the Court of Last Resort, but the defeat, as subsequent facts revealed, proved a splendid failure, for the Church, from the loss of one great university, in its stead acquired two greater still. But the puissant leader had overtaxed body and brain, and his soul agonized over the loss his beloved Church had sustained, and then was marked the beginning of the end of that eventful life we are now commemorating.
Thus is enumerated in part only what the indomitable worker did while discharging the duties of pastor, professor, president of colleges, editor of the general organ of his Church and general superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church. South. Did ever a human being pack more of the good and great into a working life of fifty years? One explanation, which reveals another wonder, was related to this writer by Bishop Hoss, who said, "During the twelve years I was editor of the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, I never re-wrote a single editorial." Those editorials that placed him in the very forefront of the greatest editors of his generation were given to the reading public just as they flew from brain to pen except, very infrequently, one word was substituted for another. AS to general and special information he was a living encyclopedia. With history, sacred and profane, his familiarity was remarkable.
From the TEXAS CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE we quote: "Bishop Hoss was a man of uncommon gifts. He was an eloquent and convincing preacher. His mind was a storehouse of valuable and amazingly accurate information. He was courageous and outspoken so that his position on questions of public concern was never in doubt. In the social circle one rarely meets so charming a man. For a generation he was a leader in his church. He was easily among the foremost editors of the country."
From the ARKANSAS METHODIST: "Rarely have men been so generously endowed. His power of analysis and discrimination was keen, his logical faculty strong, his memory prodigious, and yet he had the instincts of a poet and the temperament of an advocate. His mind was an inexhaustible storehouse, and his forms of expression were simple but rhythmic, and delightfully fresh and illuminating. As a raconteur he was charming, as a historian original, as an editor elegant and forceful, as a preacher elaborate and emotional. His devotion to his church was a passion. His religious experience was real and vital. He scorned neutrality, and yet was broad in his sympathies. For twelve years he dominated his church as no other man had since the days of McKendree. His like we shall not see again. The church mourns one of her greatest sons, and humanity has lost a brother."
Speaking of Bishop Hoss as a preacher Dr. Burrow, editor of the MIDI,AND METHODIST, said: "When at his best no man could surpass him. He swept a congregation like a prairie fire. Information, inspiration, pathos, eloquence and the manifest power of the Holy Spirit made his deliverances dynamic."
The CENTRAL CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, of the M. E. church, among other complimentary things said editorially: "One of the most conspicuous Methodist leaders during the latter half of the nineteenth century was Elijah Embree Hoss. He ever was a prodigy in argument, keen as a Damascus blade, but keen also as to the chivalry of argument which had a pride in fair fighting. There was no limit to his versatility in conversation, or as an off-hand speaker."
From a resolution adopted by the preachers' meeting in Knoxville we quote as follows: "Bishop Hoss was a remarkable man. He was cast in a large mold. He was a great preacher and a wise bishop. In the pulpit he was a master of assemblies; and when at his best he swept everything before him."
In a personal letter to the writer from Bishop Denny, who is not given to exaggeration, and who knew Bishop Hoss as intimately as did any other living person next to those of blood kin, is this statement: "For fullness of knowledge, retentiveness of memory, instant command of al! his resources, and a ready wit, he was, perhaps, the best equipped man in the church."
Another of our bishops said: "He was the greatest preacher I have ever heard."
In 1898 Bishop Galloway said to this writer: "Dr. Hoss is a marvel. He is not only a very rapid and prodigious worker, but his memory is a wonder. He can read a new book and then repeat it substantially from the beginning to the end. He forgets nothing. He is great along any line. I consider him the greatest man in our church." And an eminent jurist said just before the death of the bishop: "He is the greatest living Tennessean,"
From a great southern daily newspaper, the editor a Romanist, the following is taken from an editorial: "The whole south has suffered an irreparable loss in the death of Bishop Elijah Embree Hoss. This distinguished churchman, educator and editor passed away after a life crowded with good and useful deeds for his fellow-man. He goes to his reward mourned by the whole southland regardless of race, creed or any other ties. Laboring assiduously in God's vineyard, he realized that every human soul had an equal valuation in the estimation of the Master to whose service he dedicated his life work. He will be missed, but things for which he stood will continue to grow and blossom and bear fruit."
Bishop DuBose, in an appreciation published in the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, said: Elijah Embree Hoss was great, and is great forever. The late President Roosevelt, in my presence, and in the presence of twenty other churchmen, appraised him one of the conspicuous intellects of the continent; and I have occasion to know that the man who today is hailed as the supreme arbiter of world destinies has long held concerning him a not dissimilar judgment. Bishop Hoss was the church statesman of his age and denomination. No Methodist has surpassed him, no Methodist has equaled him. in this sphere, in his generation."
Quotations of similar import to the foregoing might be made enough to make a book. But we desist. His intellectual powers were massive, and his attainments phenomenal. Able writers have already assayed to measure and to analyze them. It is into the realm of the soul of him we loved so dearly we wish to look more particularly just now, and present for consideration those hidden and finer virtues which were the most potent in the formation of the grand character of the man.
This writer had superior opportunities to discern the basic principles upon which that character was built, he believes, and hopes it will not be amiss to briefly set forth some of them.
Our ancestral families were related by blood and were intimate. The writer knew Embree Hoss when he was a small boy. In the year 1869, in Greeneville, Tennessee, one commenced his pastor life, and the other his professional career. Both occupied the same office and the same bed in that office. Their aspirations and hopes were common knowledge. An intimate friendship was then formed that grew in closeness and strength, as fifty years flew past, without a strain or a jar. The younger, by some eight years, first grew weary, lay down to rest, feel on sleep and awoke in the paradise of God; and now, the elder is trying to do that which the younger stood pledged to perform had the conditions been reversed as to longevity.
The life of E. E. Hoss was a busy and a fruitful one. He never learned to rest or to work leisurely, for his nature was impulsive. He was combative for a principle but was as chivalrous as any knight-errant of history or legend or song. He lived in an atmosphere of love, and his sympathies took in all suffering humanity, for the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man was a religious axiom by which all his acts were squared. His life was clean, and as pure, so far as indicated by word or deed, as the morning dewdrop on a spear of grass. The spirit of benevolence enriched his soul. He dispensed charities beyond his means, and until he left an estate little more than that of the widow of sacred writ who cast her all into the treasury of the Lord. He was as humble as the publican immortalized by Bible history. When the vote was announced that recorded him a bishop-elect he burst into tears, bowed his head to his knees, uttered a prayer to God to make him worthy of the sacred duty imposed, and to give him strength to bear the new responsibilities cast upon him. His life was as transparent as the limpid waters of his native heath. Envy never smirched his soul, and he took delight in the advancement of others, and would lend a helping hand even against his own promotion. It is well known, and a fact worthy of record, that he was earnestly endeavoring to secure the election of a friend to the editorship of the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE at the very time he was chosen to that exalted position. He was human, was fallible and made mistakes, but they were of the head, his heart was always right. He gave his confidence without reserve, but too easily, for frequently it was misplaced and caused him pain. In the social circle, anywhere, everywhere, he was always the central figure, the royal entertainer by his charms of speech, his depth of thought, his broad and accurate information, or his inexhaustible fund of humor, as the occasion demanded; and this leadership in social discourse was not by assumption but by unanimous consent of those delightfully entertained. He scattered sunshine all along his pathway and never brought sorrow to a human heart, nor needlessly put a shadow on a human brow, though he occupied positions most exacting in duties to be performed. He was deeply pious and intensely religious and had a faith in the Crucified One that was sublime. He was anchored so firmly to the God he so faithfully served that he could contemplate his passing without H tremor, and in anticipation of his final and crowning victory could say: "Death, where is thy sting; grave, where is thy victory?" He was a hero of exalted type.
Have I magnified his virtues? I have spoken of his inner life, and from the secret chambers of his being, from what was revealed by the mirror of his soul. And yet he was a man of sorrows. The afflictions, some of them from tragedies of those he loved as dearly as he did his own life, bore heavily on his great spirit, and often he was bowed with grief, but every heartache drove him closer to the throne. From experience he learned every phase of human life except that of depravity. He drank from every fountain, sweet and bitter, but not befouled by sin.
As a husband and father love and devotion formed the crown jewel of family life. He loved his church beyond measure, especially his Holston Conference as was manifest at its 1918 session at Johnso»« City. Although technically he ceased to be a member of the body on his elevation to the episcopacy, yet its love and affection for him manifested by keeping his name on the membership roll, by unanimous vote, touched him deeply. Next to his church, and the Holston Methodism of that church, the Holston country and her people were objects of his affection. Neither ever had a more loyal son, nor one more ready to defend, nor one so able.
And now that his pen has dropped, and his voice is hushed, and he is numbered with the dead, the history of Holston Methodism, aye, of world-wide Methodism, will be largely unwritten until a full chapter is devoted to the life and work of the loftiest son of Holston Methodism. And more, Holston Methodism will never show a proper appreciation of him who wrought so gloriously and so imperishably until a shaft, suitably inscribed commemorative of his deeds, shall have been erected by her over his sleeping dust in the far away state of Oklahoma.
**BURIAL: Embree and Abbie were originally buried in Greenhill Cemetery in Muskogee County, Oklahoma and then were transferred and reinterred in Maple Lawn Cemetery on Jackson Boulevard in Jonesborough, TN on 12 Apr 1924.
Written By: E. C. Reeves – Holston Conference Journal – 1919 – Pages: 67 - 72